Understanding Enabling and Management Tools in Cloud Computing

How you use all sorts of software with cloud computing in your organization is changing dramatically — whether you’re considering a supply chain as a service or a word processor as a service. Although some of these services might actually be delivered within a private cloud in your own data center, many vendors will enable you to use their data center services.

Testing as a service in cloud computing

Testing is one of the biggest uses for cloud computing. Even when a company moves to using a public or private cloud, it still needs to conduct the same testing it would need in an on-premise data center, including

Functional testing

Unit testing

Stress testing

Compatibility testing

Performance testing

Requirements management

Integration testing

One of the biggest problems for developers is accurately simulating the conditions (expected and unexpected) when software is deployed.

In addition, more companies are looking at testing as a service and development as a service as a way to keep track of development teams that are often distributed across the globe.

Monitoring and management as a service in cloud computing

Companies in the systems management space are positioning themselves for this world. Vendors come at this market from two different perspectives:

From the top down, large telecommunications are packaging their capabilities so they can help provide cloud management and monitoring.

You also see traditional Web services monitoring companies offering services that will tell you if your Web site has added new services to support the cloud.

Development tooling as a service in cloud computing

Developers beginning to create new software are increasingly turning to development as a service. (In other words, development is done in a cloud-based environment instead of implementing development within a single internal-development environment.) This delivery model of development infrastructure can be done through one of the Platform as a Service vendors.

Security as a service in cloud computing

Almost without exception, vendors providing antivirus software are offering their products as a service. These vendors include Symantec, McAfee, CA, and Kapersky Labs. In addition, companies such as Hewlett-Packard and IBM have tools that scan environments for vulnerability scanning and testing.

Identity management is an important aspect of on premise as well as cloud services. Lots of companies in this market will begin offering identity management as a service.

Compliance and governance as a service in cloud computing

Compliance and governance tasks are time consuming and complicated tasks that large companies are required to do. Therefore, offering these capabilities as a service is critical.

Not surprisingly, hundreds of companies are moving into this market. Services that are becoming SaaS include the following:

Patch management

Business continuity planning

Discovery of records and messages

Various governance requirements such as SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) in the United States and SaS 70 (Statement of Audit Standard) controls for data.

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